>>12007554
I'll see what I can remember. I think NPCs just give you advice or lore, which can be helpful but isn't strictly necessary. The main advantage for leaving the tower early is because you can keep your items and the moves you pick up between runs. You have to finish the tutorial tower before you go to the main tower, so leaving isn't as important there.
After a battle, you should always search a floor for items, unless there's a particularly fierce monster loaded for that floor. (You will only fight the same monster you fought before when you search.) If you get interrupted by a battle during the search, you can keep searching until you can actually pick items up. You can also rest several times if you need to. The moves you pick up in scrolls are random and the main things you want are good jump-in attacks and pokes. The character stat buff items only last per run so it can be good to save those for later runs.
Before a battle during the stair climb, the floor monster will make a sound and you will also be able to search at the door and it will give you a distinct hint about which monster you are going to face. In the beginning monsters don't really require much preparation, but later on it's much easier if you know what shield to use. You should keep one of each elemental shield and switch between them as necessary before fights. If you don't want to learn them by playing through yourself you could probably watch some playthroughs
There are some spellcasters starting in the 20s floors that are pretty nasty. Late 20s floors there's a headless spellcaster guy with his head in his hand that requires an ice shield, I remember that. I think the early 20s floor spellcaster you want to use an energy shield. A lot of monsters will breathe fire or have ice attacks so it's good to know ahead of time which ones require which, and switch before going in.
I played very defensively with lots of blocking and waited for big attacks to strike.
